Since 1981, primary and secondary school students have been sensitized to dance education by dance teachers who offer the discipline within the curriculum. The dance teachers in the school environment (DTSE) of Quebec benefit from a university formation which is at once disciplinary, pedagogical and practical and which develops their artistic as well as professional competencies. It is within this initial formation that the development of the professional identity of the teacher begins (Lessard et Tardif, 2003) and continues to develop throughout their entire career. Nevertheless, the identity construction of the DTSE has not been made the subject of a thorough study, since the teaching of dance in the school environment is a relatively new, non-traditional and unfamiliar profession. Thus, within the framework of a sociological constructivist approach, we study the tensions and identity strategies inherent in the biographical trajectories as well as in the professional representations of the DTSE with the aim of knowing better who they are. We seek to understand the meaning which they give, in their identity construction, to their formative path, to their work, to their relations in work, to knowledge, and to institutions by elaborating the relations maintained with others, and their perceptions of their artistic and educational roles, status and functions. A conceptual framework enabled us to make a sociological portrait of the spheres of identity negotiations inherent in the construction of their professional identity thanks to the analysis of the double biographical and relational transaction, a concept of Dubar (1991).
The data collected from eighteen DTSE was generated from a socio-demographic questionnaire as well as from a questionnaire and interviews on their professional representations, their backgrounds and on the turning points of their biographical trajectories. The inductive analysis of the data, using the grounded theory approach, was verified by fifteen participants, and reveals six internal and external spheres of identity negotiation common to the identity construction of the DTSE: To become, To achieve, To project oneself, To make one’s place, To encounter the other and To act. These spheres represent identification fields within which the identity construction process of the DTSE develops in relation to the various identities inherited, acquired, prescribed, real, and projected. However the intervals between the opposing logics, the complementary postures and the roles to be played in practice for oneself and for others could provoke intrasubjective and intersubjective identity tensions which we have identified. In order to reduce the intervals between the polar representations and to alleviate the zones of identity uncertainties, the DTSE employs certain temporal and spatial strategies. We have identified nine such strategies: Conversion, conciliation, differentiation, multiple implication, identity preservation, defence, promotion, alternation of roles, and continuing education. This study exposes DTSE manners of defining oneself for oneself and for others which give access to the identity referents of the various spheres by concrete examples resulting from the verbalisations of participants in the field. Our interpretation of the results conducts us to describe six provisional identity profiles. Our results offer possible consequences in initial and continuing formation.